A Private Viewing

CAITLIN CUNDIFF

The flowerbeds by the front door were Ima’s only children.She crushed up her bones with a mortar and pestleto put in the soil as if she expected her kneecapsto bloom again.

II.

The peonies have folded into themselves,stems shriveled into fragile twigs.Ima’s finger pads, puncture woundsgorging on the syringe’s fluids like starving soil.

III.

“If they cannot look at the iris” Father said,they look at the hands.”He fetches the acrylics in the drawersand glues the tips into her nail beds.Ima hated the waxy coating of polyester leaves.She would hate the brittle free edgesof these fake fingernails.

When Father cleanses her handsand pastes them together,I hope he glues them in prayer.

Punnett Squares

CAITLIN CUNDIFF

I cannot speak genetic code.Cannot thread the sequencestogether like a child’s handmade necklace.The sequences of Ima and Iare used as extensionsto reach rain leaf gutters.With others, I would slipand catch my ankle on their rungs.I want to tell my helixto unravel, let the beadsfall and sleep with Ima’s,like she did when I was lockedin my bedroom, coughing up capillaries.

Ima’s corpse makes me sicklike looking into the open casket.Expect her eyesto rocket open,her blood and acid in the drainof the embalming table.Unravel my ladder, and herd the genomeswhere her blood dozes.

Lay us both in the same plot.Sometimes I want to hidein her veins and hanga hammock on the ribcage.She is the parlor I read inunder dimmed lamplight,shoes scattered from the front doorto the kitchen.

Caitlin Cundiff received her MFA in Poetry from Oklahoma State University.